Mean 18

There's Little more irritating than a game's packaging being emblazoned with highly complementary review quotes from ; mysteriously unnamed authors. Still worse is a highly complementary and anonymous quote that is patent drivel. Like this one for Mean 18: 'The graphics and sound are excellent.' Yar, right. Maybe they were in 1986 when the game was first released, but in 1993 it is most certainly an ugly duckling. This review, however, isn't going to be a slag-job since, aesthetically-challenged as Mean 18 is, it's by no means a bad game. What it offers for a tenner is a no-frills golf-sim which, though providing none of the goodies to be found amid the likes of PGA Tour Golf or Links 386 Pro, at least avoids the hour-long screen updates. Its easily accessible system and playability compensate for its anachronistic nature, and the course-designer gives you something to do if you get bored.

Most of the stuff you'd normally find in a golf game is here: varying terrain, wind factors and so on - although the ground seems to be entirely flat, which makes putting pretty simple. Oh, and there's the small fact that even if you've been tapping the ball around the flag for hours and are 400 over par, when you finally hole it with a one-inch shot, the computer comments 'Nice putt'! Still, computers, rather like Jim Rosenthal, were never heralded for their sporting knowledge.

Obviously, if you already have access to PGA Tour or Links then forget it, but if you're too skint or have too basic a system to run either, give Mean 18 a whirl. It's playable and has the added bonus of a whole host of custom courses available on CompuServe.